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Heroes Community > Other Side of the Monitor > Thread: Rational Thought.
Thread: Rational Thought.
Tsar-Ivor
Tsar-Ivor


Promising
Legendary Hero
Scourge of God
posted January 27, 2015 01:29 PM bonus applied by Corribus on 28 Jan 2015.
Edited by Tsar-Ivor at 13:33, 27 Jan 2015.

Rational Thought.

I wanted to latch this on to "Is free will an Illusion?", but that took a different spin than what I had in mind.

Now, rational thought has been a recuring theme in my studies, both in political theory/science and in History, it is an interesting concept that I'd like to discuss. Now, the empirical definition of rational thought is that a 'rational' person is self interested, and will seek to always do what is most attractive to his interest. I say attractive, because we never know how are actions/decision will impact on our objective, we may believe that it will be beneficial, but this may not be true in the end. However, we are largely interested with motivation as opposed to action and outcome.

Hobbes takes this further, that not only rational people are self interested, but all people, that it is 'human nature', he illustrates this in his "state of nature". State of nature being a landmass that is populated, but devoid of society or any form of collective institution (beyond the small groups that might be formed, though he argues even these are for self interest). Therefore, without any constraints, all of us will be taken in by our base nature of self preservation* (defined at the bottom) and self interest, and "a right to all things". The only solution out of this being that all of us agree to persue our selfish nature within the framework of laws, that bar foul play and provides a form of stability and order to the game. This is to a large extent in my opinion what modern society is, I say large extent, because the rules of the game primarly apply to the masses and rarely extends to the upper sections of society. Of course, I summarized a complex and some would argue a higly contextual idea (or at least my personal interpretation of it) quite briefly, but I hope that I got the broad idea of what empirical/scientific view of rational thought is .

Now, that is the emprical take on it, I do not necessarily disagree with it, but I do disagree with its absolutism, that you are either rational or irrational based on whether you follow your baser instinct of greed and self-preservation. Instead, I believe that humans are multi-dimensional beings, and that it is in our nature to be both (or at least have varying potential of being) self-interested and self-preserving as well as motivated by mutual interest, and each individual's balance between the two varies, and then varies again based on the situation, but none are devoid of either one, and neither is 'irrational'. Now, in theory the two are mutually exclusive, how can they not be? You cannot be motivated by both personal gain and mutual interest (though your action may benefit both, we are dealing with the mind at the moment). True enough, but our motivations for actions are very rarely consistent, and in almost all cases when it is not, you will find that there is an overriding influence on our natural way of doing things, for example consistently motivated by fear, code of honour, code of conduct that et cetera.  

This is my take on rational thought, that it is human nature to be both selfish and considerate to others, but based on personality and the situation one will take precendence over the other, it is rational to choose aptly. Since humans DO have a choice, more often than not we rely on our nature, but nature is merely an influencing force, not a controlling one, but it is all too easy to come to rely on it. As for what is meant by aptly, it is a rather ambiguous way to end, afterall, what is the best outcome? I think a good definition of a good desire/an apt action (rational thought/action), is to be motivated by mutal interest so long as one's needs (not wants) are met, and that all under the authority contribute to the self preservation of the whole. However, if needs are not met, it does not necessarily mean that it is rational for the members of the state to partake in a massive free for all. For example, there is one loathe of bread, let us say that you need that you need half a loathe to maintain your daily "need", but there are ten people vying for a portion, by my reckoning it is rational to share the bread with one other person, or two people out of the 10 to share (if you get murdered or somethin.

I hope that I have made sufficient sense, I do often get the impression that what I write is often hard to follow, queries are preferred over misconceptions, so if you have any questions please ask, and challenge my ideas! Peer scrutiny helps me improve/change/reevaluate my ideas!

So, what do you guys think rational thought is, and what defines a 'rational' person?!

_Do note that I have not defined what "needs" are, or their specific quanities, such as how much food or water we need. Not necessarily part of my argument, but to define needs, I refer to every condition that is needed for a human being to be 'healthy' to be met.

_*Self preservation: The empirical definition is to preserve the physical body. However, this technically extends to preserving the "self", a state of mind, or a set of beliefs that you believe define 'you', therefore dying for a set of principles is not necessarily going against our nature of self preservation, risk or to commit to certain death rather than to change what defines you in a sense is self preservation.

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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted January 27, 2015 02:18 PM
Edited by artu at 14:37, 27 Jan 2015.

You are right about it not being absolute. One can even argue if rationality is the most dominant motivating factor of our psyche, still, it is a very significant part and that's for sure. However, both on a civilizational and individual scale, we can observe that irratianal behaviour is as common as rational behaviour, so although one can say rationality is specific to humans, you cant just as easily say humans are specifically rational all the time. There are many factors including social norms, cultural heritage, subconscious urges and anxieties, emotional bond etc that would lead us to pick an irrational option deliberately or unknowingly, in many cases.

Besides, rationality also has its own fatigue. It would be exhausting and unhealthy to ignore other aspects of life in the name of reducing yourself into a rational agent. Being healthy is good, being a health freak, on the other hand, can hinder you in a broader sense than going out of your diet or taking a drink every once in a while.
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Tsar-Ivor
Tsar-Ivor


Promising
Legendary Hero
Scourge of God
posted January 27, 2015 06:40 PM
Edited by Tsar-Ivor at 19:06, 27 Jan 2015.

Quote:
There are many factors including social norms, cultural heritage, subconscious urges and anxieties, emotional bond etc that would lead us to pick an irrational option deliberately or unknowingly, in many cases.


Even in these cases the human being is governed by a personal selfish (selfish witout the "bad" connotation) motive or one of self preservation, even a motive that is for mutual benefit can fall into this category. For example a person that believes that helping others in need is an aspect of his peronality is exercising the desire for self preservation when he tries to help others (you will sometines see cases of people trying to help, even when help is neither desired nor appreciated). I can apply the same methodology to all your examples if you so desire.

Or at least that is probably what Hobbes would say. I agree with you from my view though, as I have linked rational thought with 'the optimal course of action in a given situation', and we all know that people rarely act in such a way. Then again, I think Hobbes was right to a certain extent (or at least my understanding of his work and many others that expanded on his ideas), but it is not rational thought that they are talking about, they are talking about human nature, and the two are not the same. This is why I wanted to link this to "is free will an illusion", since by Hobbe's logic human nature governs us therefore we have no choice, as rational people are always selfish, therefore to not act in such a way is abnormal. Instead we do have a choice, and I believe that my definition of rational thought (the best choice/course of action for a given situation) is correct (for now anyway).

I have to think on this slightly more, as I may have undermined myself.
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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted January 27, 2015 07:29 PM
Edited by artu at 19:39, 27 Jan 2015.

Well, in Hobbes' time, the concept of subconscious did not exist, they thought it was people being possessed by the devil and all that snow...

Also, benefical and rational intersect a lot but they are not always the same, especially when the overall benefit is happiness. Happiness not just as in comfort or plain pleasure but happiness in a deeper sense, as in life with a significant meaning. For example, many great artists I admire have an irrational, self-destructive dark side and what they achieve in life through that is far beyond any shallow formula of ultimate happiness = ultimate comfort. To me, that is such a shallow and primitive notion of self-preservation or self-interest, it indicates that the person building his paradigm of benefit around it misses a complete dimension of the human experience. So, even on a pragmatical basis, since pragmatism has also its own deeper layers, reducing man into his measurable interest is problematic.

It doesnt even work anyway, a lot of research shows that when you build a system that supports and idealizes only selfishness and optimize that through all rational means, people end up unsatisfied and in a constant state of hunger for more. The trick is to search for the meaningful, instead of searching for more, since "more" has no end.
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mvassilev
mvassilev


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Undefeatable Hero
posted January 27, 2015 10:13 PM
Edited by mvassilev at 22:17, 27 Jan 2015.

Is a rational person self-interested? First, we have to be more clear about what we mean by "rational". There are 2-3 different kinds of rationality that have different implications. First, there's epistemic rationality, which seeks to build an accurate model of the world. Second, there's instrumental rationality, which seeks to accomplish an agent's goals. Third, there's deliberative rationality, which weighs an agent's goals against each other, but arguably that's a combination of the previous two. Since we're talking about Hobbes and related topics, we're talking about instrumental rationality, which means that a rational person is one that most effectively accomplishes their goals - this is true by definition.

However, accomplishing one's goals is not necessarily equivalent to self-interest. One's goals need not be selfish - for example, seeking to donate to the most effective charities to do as much good as possible is a goal that instrumental rationality could be applied to. However, there is a strong case that a person who is effectively accomplishing their altruistic goals is deliberatively irrational (if we accept deliberative rationality as separate from instrumental rationality) or instrumentally irrational (if we don't). This is because pleasure as a sensation is inherently very desirable, so someone whose actions don't give proper weight to that fact is being irrational. An even stronger case is to be made for the importance of self-preservation, because you have to be alive to do anything and to experience the good consequences of your actions (e.g. pleasure). However, the instrumentally rational (and deliberatively rational) person need not be selfish in the common understanding of the word - he can and should act to benefit others when doing so would benefit him, which is often, because man is a social animal.

There are also conceivable beings that can't experience pleasure but are still instrumentally rational, who would have goals different from those of rational humans.

One can't reject being instrumentally rational because doing so would be a rejection of the maximal fulfillment of one's goals - if you can consistently reject them, then they weren't your goals in the first place. "I don't want to be (instrumentally) rational" is equivalent to "I don't want what I want" or "I don't like what I like".

As for free will vs choice, acting optimally in no way conflicts with free will. You're free to act suboptimally - nothing stops you - but you shouldn't.

(Hobbes is great - he's better than most contemporary political philosophers, and when you consider how long ago he wrote, he looks like a genius. I think his political conclusions are wrong, but his procedural approach is very good. Tsar, if you're interested in a more contemporary Hobbesianism, I recommend David Gauthier's book "Morals by Agreement".)
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artu
artu


Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
posted January 27, 2015 11:02 PM
Edited by artu at 23:02, 27 Jan 2015.

Defining "instrumental rationality" with such an inclusive context is tautological, since it becomes almost the same as "willingness." For an act to be categorized as rational, it should involve deliberate reasoning, instinctively trying to stay alive is not AGAINST rationality but irrelevant to it, so, we dont call it "instrumental rationality," we call it instinct. A lizard trying to stay alive is not instrumentally rational.

If your motives that are not based on reasoning are in conflict with your motives that are, it is a very possible situation that your reasoning is in conflict with your preferences.
Saying "I want to drink my coffee with so much sugar and it's instrumentally rational because it's what makes me happy" is actually to empty out the meaning of the word. It would mean that an irrational act is the instrumentally rational thing to do. That is possible only as long as something is rational just because it's a preference. That's not so.
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